Future Tense
by SemiPrecious
Summary: A few hours or a few years waiting, there's no real difference once you've lost the illusion that you're eternal.
1. Chapter 1

Usually, whenever Tsuna woke from a nightmare it was a regular, humdrum affair. He never remembered the details, and only knew in the morning that he had had one at all when Reborn, after kicking him awake, informed him with his usual creepy smile that he had been tossing in his sleep, muttering some nonsense about giant dango monsters on legs.

Such nightmares were inevitable. Schoolwork, mafia training, the perpetual panic that came from having psychotic and occasionally abusive friends/subordinates – these various daily stresses often carried over into his dreams. The dreams were not pleasant but they were not unusual, and more often than not they were quickly forgotten upon awakening.

This, however, was not usual.

Tsuna lay on his bed, ram-rod straight with muscles clenched immovably into place, sweat pouring from him. It soaked his pyjamas; made his mousy brown hair matt to his forehead. His eyes were stretched wide, but they were unseeing – a trembling hand clutched the material above his heart; it was pounding furiously.

His lips mouthed a silent sob between his staggered breaths.

_What was that_?

Tears blurred his vision.

_Why am I still thinking of this? Isn't it all behind me now_?

No, never behind; always in front, all around, everywhere; as inescapable as Fate.

After many long minutes locked into place, unable to move, almost even unable to breathe despite the wide gape his mouth was set in, Tsuna finally managed to gain control of his limbs long enough to raise a trembling hand to his mouth, and release a choked sob.

_I thought it was all behind me now_…

* * *

**Future Tense**

A.N. Ever since reading 'The Wall' by Jean-Paul Satre, I've been wanting to an angsty, introspective piece about the nature of death. This is the result of that urge.

Thanks to Zeriku for betaing.

No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fic.

* * *

It had been months now since he and his Guardians had returned from the future, and Tsuna still hadn't recovered. It was easy enough to smile during the day, to panic over Gokudera's destructive tendencies and sweat through Reborn's tutoring methods, but at night there was nothing to distract him and he was all alone in the darkness and the tightness in his chest, the phantom pains, would remind him of the fact that in the future _he would die_.

And his death would not be an easy slipping away, in a bed surrounded by friends. He would be shot dead. Gunned down in the street_, _the bite of metal in his blood shaking the world on its axis before it disappeared, forever. It was a truth that left him cold.

The others seemed to have recovered though. That was a different time, after all. They had defeated that other, unthinkable future; they were safe here.

Tsuna had smiled when they had said that, and had nodded.

He could not bring himself to speak. What could he say? How could he describe the impossibility of a thinking breathing human being suddenly snuffing into nothing? It's not natural to die. All those things that compose us, just breaking away like they were never whole… What makes a human?

He stared at his fingers; short, calloused, marred with scratches and small burns.

What are we made of? The cells of dead things; the remains of dead stars –a trillion years worth of potassium atoms and carbon, and other things he wished he couldn't remember from science class. And Time. Time was woven inextricably into the weave of muscle and marrow and slippery sinew. It was Time that aged us and made us incontinent and gave us sicknesses and cancers and marched us ceaselessly into Death.

Time is against us.

The weight of the past leans on the present and deadens the future. Time sees to it that we live helpless in the force of patterns, an endless goosestep, the same desire lines stretching ahead, all of them linear, all of them chronological.

Time is against us, and Tsuna's life had been paced out from the beginning.

The ache in his bones knew it all. He could see the shape of his future but couldn't get beyond it. Every time he thought he saw a way out, a method of dealing, escaping, _living_ – his shoulders bowed with a little more pressure and he was left leaning on the limits of himself, exhausted and miserable.

Who was he to think that he could undo Fate?

* * *

Tsuna woke for school the next day in the usual way, with Reborn clobbering him over the head with Leon and threatening him with the fact that Hibari would 'bite him to death' if he was late. This prompted Tsuna to shoot out of bed and wrestle into his uniform with a resounding 'Hiiiiee!', the brunette's panic heightening with each failed attempt at sticking his limbs into the right hole.

"Dame-Tsuna."

The ominous click of Reborn cocking his gun prompted another quiet scream from the panicked boy, and then Tsuna was blindly fleeing the room with his head still trapped inside his shirt.

Reborn sat at the end of the bed, absently polishing the transformed Leon as he waited. Barely a minute had passed before a blushing Tsuna (uniform straightened courtesy of Nana) re-entered the room and accepted his forgotten socks from the carefully blank-faced Reborn. Face still burning Tsuna closed his bedroom door behind him… and promptly tripped down the stairs.

Time may have changed some things but he was still the same dame-Tsuna. All that had really changed since his introduction to the mafia was that he was now a slightly older dame-Tsuna, with a legion of subordinates who (well, most of them) were willing to cater to his every whim, and protect his life, even at the expense of their own.

Tsuna shuddered as he shouldered his school bag, but then he was sprinting out the door with Reborn shooting at his heels and there was no more time for thinking.

School passed as it usually did, and if Gokudera and Yamamoto kept shooting him concerned glances, and if Hibari uncharacteristically pre-emptively bit to death Tsuna's most persistent bullies and spent the day as he had most days recently, stalking Tsuna's shadow, an act that prompted only a flat, routine objection from Gokudera… Tsuna couldn't bring himself to pay it much mind.

"Dame-Tsuna."

Said boy blinked and stuttered, looking up guiltily from where he had been doodling little characters in the margins of his exercise book. It was dark inside the bedroom - Tsuna hadn't turned on the light. "R-Reborn! I-I-I…"

Said man (the events of the future had restored the former infant to his adult form) fwapped his student soundly across the back of the head. "You're even more distracted than usual, dame-Tsuna," he scolded, but Tsuna couldn't help but notice that there was less creepy menace and more concern in his observation than usual. "What's wrong this time?"

Tsuna flushed uncomfortably. "Nothing's wrong Reborn," he lied easily, though he had to direct his gaze back to his book and pretend to proof read. "English is just hard for me. I…I'll be done soon, so…"

Reborn frowned and whacked Tsuna again, but there was no force behind the blow. "Baka Tsuna."

And that was all. The Arcobaleno didn't need to elaborate on Tsuna's need to trust his family more and rely on them to protect both his body and his heart from dark things – it was already understood. And Tsuna felt more horrible than ever for worrying everyone, especially for worrying Reborn. The last thing he wanted to do was undermine the deep trust and affection that had grown and flourished between the two over the long months, but this wasn't something he felt he could discuss with anyone. It was a private thing too deeply insinuated to put into words – the cruel stench in his clothes, the pain like a flash of colour. If it were only baring his heart to Reborn there would be no issue but he had turned these thoughts over and over so many times that they had seeped into his brain, into his tongue; nameless and no longer distinguishable from himself.

He could bare his heart, but not the secrets in his marrow – the suckable bits he needed to live.

"Nothing's wrong," he whispered, before bending back over his homework.

Reborn said nothing for the rest of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two, at last. I'll warn everyone now that updates for my fics are going to be pretty sporadic from now on - school has eaten my brains. Still, enjoy the following chapter, written by my kidneys.

Thanks to Zeriku for betaing.

No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fic.

* * *

There was a new fragility to Tsuna of late, one that had been worrying the usually detached Reborn. It was a fragility that had nothing to do with bullies or bad grades or clumsiness but was, the hit man suspected, a deeper, more profound resignation. There was an air about the small-statured boy as if at any moment he might just blink out, like a bad idea.

The road of a mafia boss was a difficult one, but it was not insurmountable, not for Tsuna. Hadn't the boy proven himself time and time again? You never stopped, proving yourself, that is, but Reborn had to admit that Tsuna was something impressive. And Reborn didn't want to lose that.

This standing was foreign to the laconic and isolate hit man. In all his long years he had never formed 'attachments'. There were people he was fond of, to be sure, but their continued existence was not necessary to his peace of mind. And while he _could_ live without Tsuna… As the months stretched on and Tsuna gained broader smiles and deeper scars, he found the notion increasingly unsavoury.

Tsuna was something special. Reborn wasn't sure how deep their affections ran, but was sure that he and his student (_especially_ his student) were not ready to find out. Not yet, anyway. Things were further complicated by the fact that the hit man had been a baby – more than that, an Arcobaleno baby – for what felt like an eternity. Well, a handful of decades anyway – who was counting? – But to an adult any number of years as a baby was just an infinity with time thrown in.

But that baby was who Tsuna knew him as. The vertigo they'd both experienced at Reborn's return to adult form was unsettling. It seemed sometimes that both their lives had been flipped upside down, and Tsuna especially was having trouble getting off the ceiling. He wasn't opening up to Reborn like he used to and Reborn had never been good with angsting teens anyway.

Things had already changed – perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse.

Reborn idly wondered if Tsuna had finished his homework yet.

* * *

Tsuna woke with a noiseless gasp, his pulse thundering in his throat, his bones turned to stone, his blood froze to ice. Tears and sweat both wet his face, and he trembled.

They were becoming increasingly frequent, these horrific, unspeakable dreams. The ghastly landscapes where people dear to him were lost forever: dead, or chased into a new country and new identity, which in the end was just another way of dying.

And then the culmination…

Tsuna fisted a trembling hand into the material that covered his heart and waited long seconds for his breathing to even out.

He turned to Reborn. By unspoken agreement the infant-turned-adult still slept in Tsuna's bed, keeping constant vigil over his student. Tsuna, who despite his occasional blustering was grateful for the man's continued presence, had therefore squished his furniture to the side and talked his mother into buying a larger bed for the two to share.

Looking at Reborn now, Tsuna knew that despite the hit man's wide-open eyes the Arcobaleno had not awoken; Tsuna's panic attacks were always near silent. The sight of Reborn's dark eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling brought a nostalgic smile to the boy's lips, and he released a shaky sigh.

_Okay_.

Calm.

He was okay.

Next to his bed, the digital numbers of his new clock – Lambo had totalled his old analogue alarm – lent the pitch of Reborn's wild hair a red tinge.

Three a.m.

People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night, lying immobile, almost not breathing, turning their thoughts round and round like weighted black stones held warm in the palm.

But Tsuna didn't want that. Anything but that.

"Reborn," he whispered, and suddenly the deep silence wasn't as claustrophobic. "Reborn."

Reborn didn't stir, so Tsuna dared to lean across the bed to place a gentle hand on the hit man's elbow, which rested above the covers.

"Reborn."

The man's expression didn't so much as flicker, but Tsuna recognised the exact second that Reborn's wide-eyed countenance made the flawless transition from slumber to consciousness.

"Tsuna." As if the younger male had called him from across a café instead of roused him from the depths of sleep. "You'd better have a good reason for waking me."

"Eto…" He hadn't thought this far ahead. Tsuna laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, asking redundantly, "Sorry, did I wake you up?"

Reborn didn't dignify that with a response. That didn't stop him, however, from dignifying it with a transformed Leon.

"Hiii!! Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Tsuna waved his hands in front of his face, his expression one of typical dame-Tsuna terror. "I-I just… wanted to t-talk to you."

"Talk?"

"Y-Yeah… Like, e-eto…W-What's my schedule f-for tomorrow?"

Tsuna flinched, awaiting the inevitable gunshot. Reborn, however, only sighed and leant back against the pillow. Just this once.

"You have an English test coming up, don't you? I suppose we'll be studying for that. It's also about time that you learned more about your predecessors."

"Predecessors?"

"Aa. The Vongola heads who came before you."

Tsuna let out his breath in a whoosh, and dared to sidle close enough to Reborn that only a breath of space separated them. After a second's contemplation Reborn accepted this, and wordlessly adjusted himself so that his student could fit into the lean bow of his body.

"Tell me about them," Tsuna said quietly. He didn't look Reborn in the eye. "Please."

Just this once.

"The Vongola Primo, that means the first, Tsuna, was called Giotto—"

And Reborn speaks, well into the night, and Tsuna closes his eyes and forgets for a few hours that just outside his window, almost within touching distance, are dead stars that shine because their light is trapped in time. Forgets how dreadful is it, looking up at etiolate lights that do not exist.

"—only lived for thirty four years, but in that time he became famous for his unique ability to use his chosen weapon so—"

What are we made of? Stardust and Time.

Tsuna fell asleep and didn't stir til morning.

* * *

Tsuna decided that it was a good thing he could never be surprised by the arrival of his two best friends and most faithful Guardians.

"TENTH!!"

The windows of the house across the street shuddered in their frames.

"Yo, Tsuna." Yamamoto's eyes closed into sunny arcs and he raised one broad, calloused hand in lazy greeting.

"Don't treat the Tenth so casually, bastard!" Gokudera snarled, predictably, and for a moment it was as though the silver-haired bomber had not changed at all since the day he had blasted his way into Tsuna's life. Physically Gokudera had hardly changed, only growing the few inches that boys his age often did. Yamamoto's already formidable height had also increased slightly, and he wore his hair a little shorter. On both boys muscles had become more prominent, limbs lean and taut beneath the crisp folds of their school uniforms. Both their eyes had sharpened.

Tsuna laughed nervously and raised his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture. "It's fine, really, Gokudera-kun." He looked up at the taller boy through long lashes, his expression pleading. "We'll be late…"

"The Tenth must not be late for class!" Gokudera proclaimed loyally, switching with his usual dizzying speed from spitting mad to reverent. "If any shitty teacher dares give the Tenth a detention, just tell me, your right hand man, and I'll find out where they live, and –"

"Maa maa, Gokudera. You're saying strange things again," Yamamoto laughed, as easygoing as ever. Shrugging off Gokudera's curses he began to stroll down the pavement while calling over his shoulder, "Let's get walking anyway, or we really will be late."

"H-Hai! Let's go, Gokudera-kun."

At least some things hadn't changed. Almost despite himself Tsuna felt his lips curve into a small smile.

Gokudera beamed.

"Of course, Tenth!"

Later, in class, Tsuna was having trouble keeping his eyes open. His English teacher was droning on and on about something that was probably vital to the test that was coming up, but Tsuna couldn't summon the will to care. The panic that had come with leaving the house on time meant that Tsuna hadn't been able to spare a moment to register how tired he really was, but long nights of bad dreams and shallow slumber were beginning to catch up to him. Though sleep had come blessedly easy last night thanks to Reborn, the five or so hours of sleep he had gained hadn't been enough to compensate for weeks of nightmares keeping him awake.

As usual, neither Yamamoto nor Gokudera were paying attention either. But while Yamamoto still politely faced the teacher and only eyed Tsuna through his peripheral vision, Gokudera was unabashedly eyeballing his boss from his place beside the brunette. The bomb-wielder's piercing stare was making Tsuna's skin crawl with its intensity, and was probably the only thing keeping him in the land of the conscious.

But Tsuna was tired, could feel that he was getting a headache, and was uncharacteristically irritable.

His eyes darted suddenly to meet Gokudera's, making the boy start. "What is it?"

The Storm Guardian flushed lightly. "Nothing!" he stage-whispered, which was probably as quiet as he could be in the presence of his boss.

Tsuna opened his mouth – maybe to tell Gokudera to stop troubling himself, stop being so deferential all the time to someone who didn't deserve it, and most of all to stop worrying because everything was _fine_ – but then Gokudera grinned, awkward but blindingly sincere, and the earnestness of the smile startled Tsuna from his funk. "J-Just know that if there's ever anything you need to talk about, or if anyone ever _dares_ to trouble the Tenth…"

Gokudera was clearly flustered, and was beginning to ramble. Yamamoto caught Tsuna's eye and grinned, and Tsuna swore he could feel his headache and temper seeping away like a dark cloud passing over, leaving only pale blue sky.

"Gokudera-kun," he whispered, and something inside him ached. "Yamamoto…"

Gokudera's eyes were scrunched closed, and he was blushing.

"…and, and if you ever need to talk… your Right-Hand Man is here! Any time!!"

"…Gokudera-kun. Sawada-kun."

The Storm Guardian's enthusiasm meant that he had screamed the last few words of his proclamation, earning the bemused stares of the teacher and class.

"Detention."

"Arsehole!"

"Hiiii!! No dynamite! _No dynamite_!"


	3. Chapter 3

A.N Sorry for the wait - this chapter didn't exist until a few days ago, but I decided that some action was needed, so I wrote it up. ^^ Meaning that the next chapter is already finished. I'll be posting it probably some time next week. Easter breaks don't mean much when you're at university -.-;; I'll do my best though, so don't forget to review!~

And just in case you're wondering, I just decided to combine the prologue with chapter one. Nothing else has changed, so you don't have to reread or anything.

No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fic

* * *

It had happened quickly, too quickly.

"I got him, I got him… Don't kill him, not yet, he's valuable…"

Tsuna blinked blood from his eye. His heart was pounding, his ears were ringing, adrenaline made his fingers twitch; he was slowly getting over his shock and pain from the gash just above his hairline was beginning to register. His breathing became harsher even as logic told him that the cut was nothing fatal, it wasn't deep, it was only that scalp wounds bleed a lot. The fact didn't keep his knees from knocking or something inside him from coiling hot and tight and desperate.

The five Mafioso – from what Family, he couldn't tell – looked hazy, unreal. They had burst out of nowhere, whacking Tsuna soundly with the butt of a gun. When he had tried to stand up again he had crumpled to the ground. Nausea was twisting his stomach in all directions. His senses were blurring at the edges. He blinked rapidly and though his sight cleared his head was pounding and too heavy for his neck.

He didn't have his gloves or Dying Will pills. It was ten o'clock at night, and he'd walked twenty metres from the door of his house to put out the garbage.

To put out the fucking _garbage_.

Used coffee beans and vegetable scraps were spilled on the ground, and Tsuna _knew_ that he'd be the one cleaning up the putrid mess in the morning, even though this time it was _clearly_ not his fault…

One of the black-clothed men slapped him, hard, across the face, and Tsuna stopped thinking about the garbage fouling the pavement.

He sank to one knee and hissed. He'd bitten his tongue.

He kept back any pained whimpers, however. Quite apart from preserving his pride – Tsuna had learnt long ago that pride meant nothing when it came to self-preservation – he knew better than to scream with the barrel of a gun trained on his face by Mr-Mafia-Thug-Number-Two. Besides, Reborn was out doing something important, leaving just Gokudera to guard him. Gokudera was upstairs, probably humming to himself as he tidied his home-made flash cards, delighted to be helping the Tenth with his homework, waiting for Tsuna to come back from his chore (and he was twenty metres, twenty god-damn metres from his house and the blood from his forehead was staining his collar). He'd begin to worry soon, because how long does it take to put out the garbage? And then panic would bubble to his throat and he'd run outside and there be nothing there but fading bloodstains, and maybe he'd scream or, more likely, he'd blow something up, because Tsuna wouldn't be there to tell him that it was ok, it was only a scalp wound and they bleed a lot, don't you know…

It was this last thought more than anything that gave Tsuna the nudge he needed to twist and kick, wrenching some muscle in his thigh and hurting his toes as he booted the gun from Mr-Mafia-Thug-Number-Two's hand. Thug-Number-One and Number-Three cursed and then Tsuna was running (running _away_ from the house, what was he thinking, damedamedameTsuna, but it was too late to turn around, they'd recovered, there was the sound of rustling breath behind him and three, four, five people coming fast and wide and arm-pumping) and then there was the sound of a cocking gun, and Tsuna panicked for a moment but he had been living with Reborn for almost a year now and he avoided the shots without turning around.

His head pulsed and his ankle rolled and he tasted bile and the world skewed on its axis.

Three droplets of blood landed on the pavement.

Tsuna stumbled but caught his balance again through sheer momentum. Then he was rocketing down a side-street, he heard the men behind him swear and skid and scuff their businessman's shoes but they were too professional to be held up for long and Tsuna could hear them following.

A throwing knife glanced off the wall, and Tsuna felt its wind in the hairs on his arm.

_I'm going to die_.

He was running blind. He didn't dare stop pumping his arms to wipe the blood from his eye.

_Again. I'm going to die, again._

One of them was close, too close; panic let Tsuna rake blunt fingernails down the outstretched arm, hard enough to draw blood. It couldn't have hurt but the shock of the attack was enough that the Mafioso – Tsuna vaguely recognised the blurry form as Mr-Mafia-Thug-Number-Three – tripped on the pavement and fell hard on his elbows. Tsuna was almost weeping as he forced himself to run faster, faster; he cut sharp and ducked away, managed to lose another, but they were still coming, relentless…

When Tsuna tripped he almost felt relieved. The moment of clumsiness had to come, and the suspense even more than the long sprint had been making his chest heave and his tongue shrivel with sour taste. He fell hard and skidded, taking off skin, and then he was lying on his back sobbing and gasping for breath.

Three of the men caught up to him, barely panting, and one kicked him viciously in the ribs.

Pain _hurt_.

Tsuna didn't scream but that was only because he didn't have the air to. He shuddered and curled in on himself, moaning between pants.

"_Stupid_ boy, stupid, stupid. Where did you think running away would get you, huh?" Another kick. This one bruised his thigh. "Fucking idiot."

_I'm going to die. _

It was almost surprising how little this meant when there was so much pain.

He couldn't swallow. Everything ached. His vision was blurry, and marred with black spots. Someone was screaming. Maybe it was him.

"TENTH!!"

"…Goku-…?"

Tsuna opened his eyes and blinked back the blurriness, and looked at a dead body. It was Mr-Mafia-Thug-Number-Two. The one who had been holding the gun. But now half his face was blown away, the edges of the wound were charred, and the insides of his skull were wet and sticky and oozing out to slick the pavement. One eye had been blown away. The remaining one was brown. The chocolate coloured iris stared out with an absolute absence behind the colour, and Tsuna thought he could understand why ancient civilisations had invented the soul.

He hadn't even heard the bomb go off.

Calloused, desperate hands wrenched Tsuna upright away from the gore. His head lolled back. Though his body screamed in pain at the sudden jerk Tsuna didn't say a word. Gokudera, a haze of flesh haloed in silver, was patting him down, looking for wounds, cursing frantically at the blood that coated his Tenth's face and Tsuna couldn't find the breath to reassure him, _It's only a scalp wound_.

Gokudera had Tsuna's blood on his hand, and it must have been slippery because he dropped his phone once before he was able to call Reborn, and then he was screaming but Tsuna wasn't, and Tsuna vaguely recalled that last Valentine's Day Gokudera had been flooded with flowers and chocolate and cards and shy confessions. Fuuta had said something about a school record. And Tsuna wondered now what Gokudera's fan-girls would say if they saw the bomber as Tsuna was seeing him, surrounded by charred corpses, red on his fingers.

"…behind the sports store, Shiro's, on Yamato-dori… Yes, fucking yes, two dozen ambulances, the Tenth is hur-… No, I don't know! Three casualties, yeah, the fuckers are… Just hurry, please, hurry, the Tenth is…"

Tsuna couldn't see the other two corpses but fancied he could smell them, but that was impossible, they hadn't even been corpses for five minutes; even three minutes ago they were living, breathing people, star-dust and time, dead things coming apart…

Tsuna's vision blacked out but he didn't lose consciousness.

"God, stay with me please, Tsuna, Tenth, stay with me, don't… Please, Tenth…"

He couldn't catch his breath. He was in so much pain.

* * *

When he arrived at the hospital some ten minutes later – being a mafia boss did have some perks – he found out that he was not badly hurt after all.

Don't worry, dear. Nothing's broken, just be mindful of your bruised ribs, don't let them jar and give them time to heal. And don't do any running for a while, you've strained the muscles in your legs, and that bruise on your thigh looks _nasty_… But everything will be fine with some bed rest, it's nothing you need worry about, injuries like this are all in a day's work, ne, Vongola-sama?

Tsuna had nodded when the doctors told him this. No, he doesn't want to see anyone right now. They can come back in the morning.

It was approaching eleven o'clock. It had only been an hour. His head was still reeling. The whole experience seemed light years behind.

He was finally able to catch his breath.

Thank you, I'd like to sleep now.

Of course, Vongola-sama. Let us know if you need anything, anything at all.

The lights clicked out. His wounds were nothing, but he was still smothered in bandages. Even his scalp wound, the one that had saturated his shirt with blood and made his hair sticky, had only needed two stitches and a fat white plaster.

Like the flip of a coin. Two stitches and a bruise, or dark oblivion. Heads or tails. Life or death.

He heard shouting, muffled, from somewhere beyond the stark corridor that opened to his room.

The doctors had obviously gotten around to telling Gokudera that the Vongola-sama wasn't entertaining guests.

Tsuna settled into his pillow – it smelt faintly of lavender, and he fought a sudden urge to sneeze – and he was finally able to allow his mind to recover from its shell-shocked state and rise, blinking, to consciousness.

He almost fell off the bed.

_Gokudera_…

A keening cry stuck in his throat and he pitched forward.

Gokudera had killed that man.

Had blown him up with dynamite.

He'd killed people before, Tsuna _knew_ that, knew that Gokudera had grown up in the mafia, lived by and for the explosions and the high of adrenaline.

His other Guardians, with a few exceptions, had also taken life.

Reborn had probably killed hundreds.

Tsuna _knew_ that.

What he didn't know was what the inside of someone's nose looked like, all cartilage and soft tissue; or that the whites of the eye could flush with blood.

He felt nauseous.

This kill was his fault. That man had died, Gokudera might have died, and he, Tsuna, would have been the one looking on, holding himself back, never quite believing that what was happening wasn't just a bad dream.

He hadn't had a choice when he had entered this world, and it had been hard and painful and he'd seen and done things he'd never wanted to see or do. He'd put himself and his friends at risk, loving everyone but hating the circumstances of their friendship, wishing they could have met under different circumstances because this fundamentally was not right…

Tsuna collapsed onto the mattress, weak with tears.

He knew his dreams tonight would be _horrid_.


	4. Chapter 4

No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fic.

Thanks to Zeriku for betaing.

* * *

Despite Tsuna's misgivings, exhaustion forced the brunette into slumber mere seconds after his fluffy head met the pillow.

He fell into the dark depths of sleep quickly. Eyes closing in a slow blink Tsuna smiled amiably into the darkness and then he was surrounded by blue and floating, riding a tender breeze that carried him through pale clouds. Tsuna let his head fall back. Had he been more aware he would have been madly grateful for the change of scenery from death and destruction, but as it was he only accepted his situation with a soft _Hmm_ of content and continued to float aimlessly.

"Oya oya, here's someone I did not expect to see."

It was as though someone had flicked a switch. The deep sky turned to packed earth, and the loose, dry soil made Tsuna's sneakers crunch when he found himself suddenly grounded. If there was one voice that could force Tsuna into alertness even while asleep (_especially_ while asleep), it was Mukuro's.

The landscape changed as his thoughts sharpened. The once blue sky was now an unassuming white tainted with the threat of storm clouds, and Tsuna found himself surrounded on all sides, as far as he could see, by flat, cracked moorland – grassless, odourless, and absolutely featureless, except for a thin covering of gritty black dust that was reminiscent of iron filings. He and Mukuro were so out of place here that they didn't even cast shadows.

Then Tsuna's brain caught up with the fact that _Mukuro_ was standing before him. Tsuna _panicked_, and scuttled back as Mukuro took a confident step forward, the brunette's eyes becoming liquid with fear as he realised that, for whatever reason, Mukuro was here, the trident wielding bat-shit insane Mist Guardian was _here_ and _grinning_ and _drawing steadily closer_…

Mukuro cocked an amused eyebrow at the quivering brunette, but did show some mercy by halting his advance and instead lowering himself to the ground, his long legs folding gracefully as he made himself comfortable on the packed earth. Heterochromatic eyes flickered pointedly from Tsuna, to the ground, back to Tsuna.

The brunette hesitated, but did lower his hands from where they clutched the hair at his temples to peer nervously up at the pineapple-haired man. He felt less cornered now that Mukuro was sitting down, despite the fact that he _knew_ that his Mist Guardian could kill him in thirty-seven different ways from where he was, and maim him in about a hundred ways more. He knew something was up, Mukuro was being accommodating and _nice_, Mukuro was never _nice_, and he wanted to run away screaming but that would mean turning his back on Mukuro, and Kami-sama what if that made the illusionist angry and prompted him to magic up a big, poisonous monster with millipede legs and icky drool and what do you know he was panicking again.

Tsuna squirmed in place, agonising with his decision while Mukuro made a show of enjoying the comforts of siting on the nice, comfy ground.

_Well, he doesn't _look_ like he wants to hurt me_.

And that was probably the best he could hope for when it came to his Mist Guardian.

Tsuna seated himself beside Mukuro. But he did make sure to leave a metre of space between them.

There was honest humour in Mukuro's grin. "So frightened! What sort of boss is terrified speechless of his lowly subordinate, hm? Kufufu…"

"I've never deluded myself, Mukuro," said Tsuna dryly. He dared to ease some of the tautness from his shoulders. "I know you're never going to be a beck-and-call servant of Vongola… And I'm not a mafia boss!"

Mukuro's grin suddenly gained more teeth, and Tsuna wisely backed down with a muted 'Hiii'.

"But this is not what I imagined your dreams to be like, Tsunayoshi-kun." Mukuro idly trailed his fingers through the scattering of black filings on the ground. If it weren't so severely flat, the place would look as though it had undergone heavy shelling. "I was expecting more… children skipping through daisies, and gummy-bear trees. What could possibly be bothering poor Tsunayoshi-kun to such an extent?"

"Wha?" Tsuna stared wide-eyed at his Mist Guardian before averting his eyes. His caramel gaze turned distant and he began to gnaw on his lip. The clouds purpled like a bruise on the sky and though there was no breeze the air turned cold.

"It's nothing you need to worry about, Mukuro." Tsuna's smile didn't meet his eyes. The black filings flavoured the air with iron. "I'm just tired, I suppose."

"I'm not worried. I am only passing through, after all. But now that I'm here, I'm curious." Mukuro's gaze turned shrewd and his red eye was probing when he looked down at the smaller brunette. "Still worried about that future?"

_Tsuna_ flinched, and Mukuro sighed as his guess was confirmed.

Mukuro knew that Tsuna had seen the anguish that death caused. Being a mafia boss he probably saw it often, even though Reborn and his Guardians largely shielded him from the reality of blood and pain and stifled breath. And death wasn't something anyone could simply 'get over', like hopping over a stone wall – not for anyone. But it was worse for the kind-hearted Tsuna, for whom every death was personal and every life was precious. But it wasn't just Tsuna now, because Mukuro and the other Guardians had dared to open their lives to someone else, to change what had been fundamental, and step into a strange world of love and family and absolute devotion. Tsuna hadn't been the only one to suffer when the bullet had hit home.

If the day Tsuna died was a sort of… roadblock, perhaps, or barrier… it was a tight barbed-wire tangle of poisonous roses and long black thorns. An immovable barricade between the Princes and the eternally Sleeping Beauty which no one could bound over but had to thrash through, leaving themselves in flayed pieces and on the other side of something only in a temporal sense.

Mukuro's red eye traced the scars on Tsuna's slight, spare, calloused hands, hands that should not belong to a fourteen, fifteen year old. Whether because they were too young or too old Mukuro wasn't sure. Here he was. Little Tsuna, with breath in his lungs and a pulse keeping time in his wrist. Alive, despite it all.

Mukuro blinked. _That_ had been a good line. Who had said it? He must have read it somewhere.

He smiled.

_Oh well_.

"…I've been meaning to ask you this, but… Why are you here, anyway? And why do you want to know what I'm thinking?"

Tsuna's vaguely suspicious query pulled Mukuro from his thoughts, and he adjusted his smile into something friendlier. "Kufufu, of course I was curious when I saw you. It benefits me to know all there is about you – all the better for possessing you, Tsunayoshi-kun."

"You _still_ want to possess me?!"

"Indeed. Your body would be very…convenient for my purposes," Mukuro purred.

Tsuna just pouted, relaxing at last. He had spent enough time around Mukuro by now to realise that the mist user had no plans to possess him, at least not right at this moment. Mukuro was not an impromptu person after all, not with things like this, and he _was_ only passing through. But the next time they met would be a different story… Tsuna vaguely wondered if he would have to go through this every time he met with the mist user. It couldn't be good for his heart. "Mou, and here I was wondering why were being so nice all of a sudden."

"Simply for my own selfish benefit, I assure you. But you are changing the subject." Mukuro leant close. "Surely you realise that that future is over now. When you defeated Byakuran–"

"I know," Tsuna interrupted. The atmosphere had changed again. His fingers began to twist the fabric of his pyjama shirt. His tongue felt thick and heavy, it was hard to talk, but it was harder to stop. He gestured helplessly. "It's just… I _died_."

Mukuro blinked owlishly. "So must we all? From dust we came and to dust we shall return?"

"It's just… I never wanted to be a mafia boss. I still think now that someone, somewhere made a mistake. It's just not… _me_, being a mafia thug. Someone died today, right in front of me, and everything felt so wrong. I… didn't react right. I'm so different now to how I used to be, and I still don't know whether that's a good thing. But it is that other life, that other self, that people are dying for, that _I_ died for…" Tsuna drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I _died_, Mukuro…"

Mukuro could understand.

And it left him cold.

Something in his blue eye flashed, and he sank away behind his eyes.

Yes, he understood all too well what it meant to have associates, friends, _family_ – he had chosen to let all of that go, and kept his distance even now, precisely because he understood other people's expectations and what they entailed. They laid out a life for you like clothes, tailored to their own desires and anticipations, and their hate or their love seeped through and _changed_ you. Was Mukuro really a witch, a demon? What did it matter? Reality was nothing but the collective experience, and if _they_ believed it, it was so.

Tsuna, Mukuro, the countless other victims – they played at make-believe. It was all they were allowed, games, and even then only as long as that was all they were. Mukuro, most often when with Chrome, played at being generous and genuine, and Tsuna could play all he liked at being foolish and clumsy. But then it was always time to go home. And then there were only more long hours of parroting the approximate life they had been prescribed.

Prescribed…

Mukuro mouthed the word to himself, tonguing the dry syllables.

It was a good word. People like himself, like Tsuna, were prescribed a life like others were prescribed medicine. The selfish weight of all that love (or hate, but weren't they close enough to the same thing anyway?) compelled them to smile and down the bitter pill and feel the effects of the drug slowly eat away their minds until there was nothing left but love, love, love.

And that lie (lie?) was what Tsuna had died for.

"I see your predicament," Mukuro muttered. He wiped his damp palms on his trousers. "In the future, you die for something you're not even sure you believe in. Was it indoctrination? Force of habit? Was it even worth it in the end, making friends at last only to lose them to a lie? And now other people in the here and now are dying, and not even Reborn can keep at bay the madness of dead arms and legs pushing in your eyes, your mouth…"

Mukuro caught Tsuna's tear on his finger.

"I love my friends," Tsuna choked. His voice wavered and his eyes were tormented. The sky swelled with rain. "I love Reborn. I love _you_. I love you all so, so much. What right do I have to drag you all into this when all my efforts can only ever be half-hearted? You don't deserve me. I don't deserve you. People are dead. I died for the mafia, I _died_, and we suffered _so much_…"

The small boy began to sob into his hands while Mukuro looked on, his expression unreadable. After a moment Mukuro held out a tentative hand and opened his mouth, only to give a small start and scowl into the roiling clouds.

"Time to wake up, Tsuna," the mist user sighed. He withdrew his hand and gave the grieving boy a half-hearted smile. "I _will_ talk to you again. It seems there is more to you than I thought."

Tsuna's pained eyes, wet with tears, only met with Mukuro's for a split second before the brunette was yanked into the land of conscious, his eyes flying open to meet twin pools of flat black.

"_Hiiiiii_!!!"

"Tsuna," Reborn grumbled, and fwapped his student soundly across the head. If it weren't so un-mafia-like, the older man would be clutching his head in pain. Distress him enough, and Tsuna's screams could make dogs howl.

Then Reborn remembered why he had woken the brunette three hours early, and the hit man's frown drew the skin tight across his face, sealing his gaze.

"What were you dreaming about?"

"Huh?"

Tsuna raised a trembling hand to his cheek, and his fingers came back damp.

"…Eh?"

The two men looked at each other, onyx boring into caramel. Long seconds of silence passed, long enough for Tsuna's breathing to return to normal.

Reborn sighed and lowered himself back onto the narrow hospital bed (when had Reborn arrived at the hospital?), closing his eyes.

"Go back to sleep, idiot student."

Tsuna was hurt more deeply by those closed eyes than he was prepared for, and breathing became difficult again.

The bed was too small for the two of them, but even with Reborn mashed against his side, so close it hurt, he had never felt more removed from the hitman.

He murmured a quiet 'sorry', his voice thick with suppressed tears. "One day…"

But still Reborn didn't open his eyes, so Tsuna, exhausted and miserable, curled up at his tutor's side and slept fitfully until morning.

* * *

A.N. Tell me what you thought of my Mukuro. He's a bastard to write, but great fun for psych nerds like me ^^


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